You tell me, the phrase echoed and bounded against little leaves and floating blossoms, reverberating like a silk screen against her heart, against her mind. She didn’t want to tell him anything. She wanted to sink down into the ground and crawl out elsewhere, over rime and passages built on ice and subterfuge, down the lengths of chilling corridors, and maybe, when she felt safe and secure again, she’d come back out. Her wings felt clipped and her chest felt strange, and everything combined into a mire, a mess, of emotions and sentiments – the Songbird was a slate of delusion and befuddlement, conspiring to escape, to flee, when she’d offered her entity to this silly charade. The femme folded away again, soft, commonplace, so if one were to look closely at bark and branches, the nymph would’ve have blended into their midst, camouflaged from the likes of many. Her thoughts were like the maze before them, all twisted, all blocked, all rigid and contorting and serpentine; nothing fluid, nothing sustained, one more venturing path to the right and then another to the left, marching and matching in unison to loss and bewilderment. Naught was simplistic in these starry encounters, with bristling constellations and harpsichord melodies, and she tried very hard to fight the notion of bristling back into her forest, where familiarity reigned and complexities were ignored, where secrets were still covert, where duplicity was queen.
 
“You scare me a little,” she admitted. Her voice filled the understory and the canopy, flickered and chimed along the hedges, as one chink of the wall was lowered, as if he’d peeked over and saw her resting there, nestled in her heartache. The words had flowed out of her mouth before she could stop them, restless and untangled, woven from frustration and fervency, like their ardor should’ve been given life long ago. Her gaze settled somewhere on a piece of sunlight, ignoring what she presumed would be his heavy, piercing, dual-hued stare (she’d memorized them before – one like the sky, one like gold) centered solely on her, judging, wondering, pondering over the mess she’d made. Lena was terrified of many things – of giving more and more of herself away and watching others stomp on her compassion, witnessing those beloved, those cherished, crossing over new paths and leaving her behind (forgotten, broken and brittle, because she didn’t really matter to them), of being forgotten time and time again no matter what she did or who she met. She was frightened of what the world would bring her again, of stepping out onto ledges, of smiling when she should’ve been angry, of refusing to fight, of refusing to bend, of refusing to tell anyone or anything about the life she’d led. “This place scares me a little.”
 
Her melody, soft and light, glowed in an ambient wave, and her stare resolutely pinpointed upon the grounds in which they waltzed, in which she dug another grave, in which she proffered more of her essence to someone who could potentially destroy her (what was one more?). If the world had been sharpened and shimmering like mirrors, like reflections of her soul, she’d be even more of a mess. If he left her there, lost and forlorn, twisted like the vines, she wasn’t sure what she’d be after she made her way out. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before he too gave up on the little bird, on the fey, on the fairy who could contort grins and shimmer away before anyone thought anything else of her.
 
The Songbird had long since realized that no matter how much she glistened, no matter how much virtue she possessed and tried to sprinkle, spark, and pervade through the realms, none of it stuck. Her heart was in a million pieces, all over the vast empires, wrecked and ruined, beautiful and incandescent, strewn amongst gardens and fires, rivers and valleys. It lay across ice and snow, fog and mist, sand and soot, waterfalls and pools. It had broken in wars, when her fury collided with might. It had splintered against monsters, when she’d tried to protect those she cherished. It had fractured when she fell on the ground, emblazoned and emboldened, because of her own foolish mistakes. It had ruptured across waterfalls and battle hymns, when she was captured trying to make it to her brethren. It had shattered when she was left alone each and every time, the endless cycle on repeat. It had scattered to the wind when she recognized her purpose, her determination, her motivations, would never be enough to keep anything or anything tied together. “I used to run into the unknown even with these fears.” I used to be brave, she thought. “Now, I just flee from it.” Then, she stilled into another pitch of silence, glancing into the abyss as he lingered along the threshold, as she paused, in the midst of escaping again. Lead the way she’d said on a flicker, on a laugh, on an audacious piece of pretense neither he or she believed, and when he tried, she remained stuck, struck by her own weakness.